idk who else to ask so im just kinda asking you
how would a whumpee that kinda like. became feral from dehumanization be able to recover from it? with like, no help from medical people, and maybe (an unlikely chance but) about maybe one person helping
I thought about this for a while, honestly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any stories or snippets on here where a conditioned Whumpee—to the extent you’re talking—recovers on their own. There’s always a caretaker to coddle them and coach them through it and honestly, this is a great idea and there should be a lot more of solo recovery arcs. Anyways, here’s a few of my thoughts
- Out of necessity. At one point they realize inside their broken mind that acting like how they are, living off the streets between dumpsters, in the back of alleys, lashing out at anyone and anything that comes close to them, isn’t assisting in survival. At one point, they’re so starving and they’re cold, the only way to receive help in that moment is to mimic the behavior they see. They follow some old fellow in a tattered coat to a soup kitchen, copy their actions leading in, and eventually once they’re served a warm meal and passed a blanket, that begins everything.
- They would have to desensitize themself to the sounds and sights that would have once sent them into a panic. The world is loud and bright and full of people, none of which is going anywhere, and unless they want to die on the side of the road they have to learn to live with it
- I imagine them almost like a stray dog. Stalking the roads, growling at anyone who comes too close, digging for crumbs in the trash cans behind bakeries and cafes.
- Slowly, they’re forced to learn how to read and count again, how to speak and how to act. It’s all about survival. If they say “hello, please,” and smile, maybe someone will drop a few pieces of paper into their palm, and they’ve since learned that that paper can be traded in the big buildings for food.
- They copy what they see, good and bad. They’ll slip things from the store into their pocket and run when it sets off alarms. They’ll do anything they can for food, and if they can’t find food they’ll beg any random stranger that they pass. They learn quickly they can’t resort to aggression anymore, that anger will lead to consequences.
Yeah that’s really all I got, for the “no caretaker at all” part at least. Mimicking what they see and basically teaching themself how to be human again from that. If you’d like me to do another piece with feral whumpees and single caretakers, lmk!
I haven’t written it all, but for the villain whumpee, River, this is what happened to him.
He was alone because the narrative sold to the public and even his companions was that he had betrayed heroes and people. He was left on his own after heavy dehumanization. Also another oc didn’t really go through their recovery completely alone but a big part of it was by self initiative.
So I have a few points about how a dehumanized whumpee could recover on their own.
- Aggression can be animalistic until they find they are living in a society. Then, instinct kicks in and the whumpee will attempt to socialize by using dominating behaviors. Intimidation, plain old attacking, setting traps. Maybe it will be successful sometimes, but there will also be others when they’re possibly getting beaten up for even trying. This will further drive the whumpee into making better strategies and/or getting stronger.
- They’re cautious to the point of paranoia, so it is very likely a whumpee that has gone feral will search for isolated places, such as woods or abandoned buildings. That means they will have to have a food source nearby, so many gross stuff will ensue. This is doubly powerful if they were trained to “earn” their food. Their justification to that will be “hunting it”. Until hunting within their “domains” stall or is threatened by an outsider, they’re very likely to not leave.
- A feral whumpee will continue to be so until sufficiently exposed to social norms. They can take the escape route to a safe environment or mimic their peers. It’s very instinctual to mirror people, however a feral whumpee will only copy behaviors that will give them a reward. It doesn’t have to be positive and will not be registered as a wrong doing because rewards are given when they do something well and they kinda really need that half eaten burger in the trash, so it’s fine if they punch their way to get it. The lack of social interaction can and will stop the process of integration BECAUSE there’s nobody to make corrections.
- Sickness is probably gonna be dealt in the most heinous way ever and be left to heal on its own. So whumpee will either develop a high pain tolerance or lower their defenses enough to try and earn help form another person, even if they’re still so anxious about people they are swatting away hands and are gone the second they feel they’re ok or know the procedure to heal themselves so they take what they need and leave.
- Like op said, mimicking and acting will have a lot to do in their recovery. They can act composed, they can act like they’re a human who has never been treated so badly they don’t consider themselves a person even if they are safe. They can also be surrounded by people, but they’re unable to create a meaningful connection because they have put up walls so high and thick it would be easier to dig underneath to get to them. So a feral whumpee might behave, but inside they’re fighting their conditioning so hard, relationships get strained and can be potential triggers, so they will be moving a lot because their façade falls over and over.
- A dehumanized whumpee that has been abandoned or disposed of, might latch into anyone that does the bare minimum, but like a stray dog, the moment they try to show any type of affection they will be running away. They don’t have the emotional development to trust anybody by random bouts of kindness, so if whumpee isn’t gonna have that exposure regularly, they will continue to be fearful and doubting of everyone.
- If whumpee is in a foreign land, they are super likely to become even more closeted, but also, for survival, they will have to sit, watch and learn. They’re probably gonna wander around searching for someone who they can understand, but if there’s nobody, they will search for ways to learn around the culture by observation and trial and error.
For now that’s all I can think about, but just gotta say a whumpee who recovers on their own will have to have exposure to others in order to do so. They can’t really shed the feral and survival mode until they’re safely allocated and don’t have to worry much about the people surrounding them. Even if it’s for two days or less, those whumpees will heal by watching and adapting behaviors from others into their own lives. That means, you can have a whumpee who is feral and will kill anybody who gets too close, slowly grow into someone who is paranoid, stressed and reserved and will kill anybody who gets too close but looks like they have integrated into society again.
Much of recovery on your own is gonna be an act you write from stolen paragraphs of other people’s script hoping it’s good enough to pass as an “authentic” one. So a whumpee who recovered on their own from dehumanization could struggle with that sense of being “a real human” because they are essentially just acting, not emotionally integrating their behavior as one of adaptation, but of survival.
